#The Altar#, when the choir was at first completed by William, stood entirely alone, and without a reredos; behind it the archbishop's chair was originally placed, but this was afterwards transferred to the corona. The remarkable height at which the altar was set up is due to the fact that it is placed over the new crypt, which is a good deal higher than the older, or western crypt. Before the Reformation the high altar was richly embellished with all kinds of precious and sacred ornaments and vessels: while beneath it, in a vault, were stored a priceless collection of gold and silver vessels: such of these as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII. were destroyed by the bigotry of the Puritan zealots: the latter made havoc of the reredos which had been erected behind the high altar, probably during the fourteenth century, and also a "most idolatrous costly glory cloth," the gift of Archbishop Laud. The reredos was replaced by a Corinthian screen, which was of elaborate design, but must have been strangely out of keeping with its surroundings; it was removed about 1870, to make way for the present reredos which was designed in the style of the screen work in the Lady Chapel in the crypt, but which cannot be commended as an object of beauty. The altar coverings which are now in use were presented to the cathedral by Queen Mary, the wife of William III., when she visited Canterbury. A chalice, given by the Earl of Arundel in 1636, is among the communion-plate. In his account of the building of the new choir, Gervase tells us that "the Master carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege--the co-exiles of the monks." When the choir was ready, "Prior Alan, taking with him nine of the brethren of the Church in whom he could trust, went by night to the tombs of the saints, so that he might not be incommoded by a crowd, and having locked the doors of the church, he commanded the stone-work that inclosed them to be taken down. The monks and the servants of the Church, in obedience to the Prior's commands, took the structure to pieces, opened the stone coffins of the saints, and bore their relics to the _vestiarium_. Then, having removed the cloths in which they had been wrapped, and which were half-consumed from age and rottenness, they covered them with other and more handsome palls, and bound them with linen bands. They bore the saints, thus prepared, to their altars, and deposited them in wooden chests, covered within and without with lead: which chests, thus lead-covered, and strongly bound with iron, were inclosed in stone-work that was consolidated with melted lead." This translation was thus carried out by Prior Alan on the night before the formal re-entry into the choir: the rest of the monks, who had not assisted at the ceremony, were highly incensed by the prior's action, for they had intended that the translation of the fathers should have been performed with great and devout solemnity. They even went so far as to cite the